face like heaven
by Paint Splat
Summary: life is easy once you learn the justice of the mechanics. - venusrobecca; AU.


Life is easy when you learn the way things work, learn the mechanics of the world. You figure out what makes people tick, and you act on this, choosing which clocks work best and which ones need greasing. You make your choices all based on first impression. Once you realize that everyone is shallow and no one cares, it's easier to bear with life.

I used to think this. People and monsters work in mysterious ways. You can't always figure out each and every little movement and what it means. I always used to want the meaning of things, constantly asking questions, badgering my parents and generally wanting answers.

Well, sometimes you just don't want the answers. The truth hurts, and sometimes it hits you bad.

Now I don't ask. I just observe. Sit back. Watch life go on without me.

It's better than being hurt.

* * *

Machinery doesn't always play nice. Sometimes if you get too close, start wondering and wandering and just being too damn inquisitive then you learn that pain is everywhere, even in beauty. You can't have one without the other.

Machinery is nice. Better than nice, in fact. Gorgeous, powerful, dangerous, fearful, whatever you want to call it. Better to admire it from afar anyway.

Otherwise you might just find yourself a little too closely acquainted. You start tasting that metal desire, and you start to stray away from what's pure and what's right.

You get infected with their witchcraft. And you get hurt.

I learnt this the hard way.

* * *

The angels came from Hell.

They were nothing like any world had ever seen before. They were strange and mystical and no one knew what to do with them until they started murdering us in dozens.

Now it's a fight for survival. Everyone is your enemy and you can trust no one. That's why I'm alone. Little Miss Flytrap, so innocent, so _naive_. Look who's laughing now.

Not me.

Where were the long white robes? The pale skin, golden hair, blue eyes and blessings? Instead they were clockwork evil. Built of copper and bronze with gold and silver, they looked like one of God's own creations. So wonderful. Surely only He could create such beauty and tragedy? Only his skilled hands could craft creatures of this design?

Yet we have been punished in this cruel world for our sins. The angels are here, the taste of blood in your mouth is fear and you are alone and hurt and _you trust no one_.

* * *

Beauty cannot be trusted.

She was beautiful. I knew as soon as I saw her, speckled with blood, flying through the air with no apparent aid other than her unnatural power, her black and blue hair streaming behind her, that she was dangerous and powerful and not to be touched.

Still, I went after her anyway, following her lustful trail of death.

* * *

"For a creature of Hell you are truly heavenly," I said. I remember those words well, and what happened afterwords.

She told me I looked lonely. That I looked sad. I told her my friends were dead. She laughed at me and pushed me against a wall, my back scraping brick, earning scars and new blood.

She felt no empathy, that demon. Only joy in my obvious pain. A part of me still finds her enchanting.

I gave in to her persuasion. What a huge mistake I made.

I wake at night after hellish horrors have grasped me screaming her name.

_Robecca_. Robotic beauty. Heaven's devil or Hell's angel?

Who was I to judge? I could only let her trample all over me, crushing my purity and stealing my heart.

My soul, however, is eternally damned. I know my destiny and I do not fear it.

It is justice for what I did twenty years ago.

* * *

I find myself now, old and nearing my time in Hell, pondering past events like they mean something.

They don't. Life is meaningless and careless and loveless and Hellish. I pray, even now, for anyone unlucky enough to be born.

People look for security and safety in words.

These words are criminal. These words are sinful.

I beg of you not to listen to me. I chose a path of damnation, and I never want anyone following me. The path is full of heartbreak.

* * *

These angels are fleeting. They like mortal deaths to be torturous and painful, yet quick. Their plan is to kill us all and them they will loot this world, take what wonders are left and abuse them.

I should be dead. I know I should. Why should I of all monsters have lived through this apocalypse? I am a worthless sinner. I should not have survived and even now I regret these memories I have of happy times.

I should have died too.

Robecca should have killed me that day when we were discovered sinning, lying in bed together, our bodies pressed closer, flesh against cool metal, her ice somehow warm against me. She should have gotten over it. She is a monster, made for killing and without emotion.

Yet something stopped her. Something stopped us all the time, stopped me from leaving, stopped Robecca from torturing me and killing me.

Stirrings. An emotion had were ... Feelings, if you want, between us.

_Love_.

I loved her, and I do not regret it. I accept my disaster.

How could I not love her? Her grace, her beauty, her charm and skill and just everything? I was a moth and she was a flame, and by all that is holy _I should have been burnt_.

And she loved me too. Her, the angel of my Hell, incapable of anything but destroying, loving me. It was like a nightmare come true.

* * *

_I should be dead_ -

They killed her. Ripped out her panels, short-circuited her, let her helpless shell of a body fall to the floor while I screamed.

So, in return, they burnt.

* * *

Oh, Robecca. So cold. So caring.

Lying in my arms, her face was still gorgeous, crafted perfectly, almost as if she was made to love and kill.

I pressed my lips to hers one last time. They were unusually cold.

* * *

Do not fall for a clockwork angel, for the worst thing possible might happen to you.

They could love you back.

I am dying, I can tell. hell approaches me. Justice is being made.

But what does justice make you?

An angel with teeth?

Or a monster with wings?


End file.
